


Blood and Flame, Smoke and Venom

by Roses



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Blood Magic, Dreams, Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Magic, POV First Person, POV Male Character, Power Dynamics, Relationship(s), Sexual Violence, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:18:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roses/pseuds/Roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hero of Ferelden is not exactly what you would call heroic. He is an elf and a blood mage who left Amaranthine to burn, and is about to let two of his companions die so that he can make the proverbial deal with the devil. He has, however, found an unlikely ally in the form of Nathaniel Howe: The son of his enemy, and a man who came to the Vigil intending to murder him. </p><p>A collection of scenes taking place around the end of Dragon Age: Awakenings, in the mind of a man who, on his good days, could probably be considered to be a bit of an anti-hero :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I wipe the dried blood off of the deep cuts in my hands as I open the door to my room. I am not surprised to see Nathaniel there. He stares out of the window, towards somewhere on the horizon. The storm clouds are brewing, and the fire catches against their underbellies as Amaranthine burns.

I cannot tell what he is thinking. 

In the courtyard, fat flecks of rain burst against the cobblestones and I lean back against the cold, grey stone. 

This close, he smells of wood smoke and burning bodies—the memory of it lingering in his hair and on his armour. 

“We cannot go on like this much longer.”

His voice is like a peal of distant thunder. 

With my back against the buttress around the window, I can see the last of the fires burning themselves out in the courtyard. They are small and intermittent, and the people hurry between them like ashes caught up in the wind. They are making safe the walls that stand around the silent shadow of the Vigil. 

The house where he grew up. 

“Did you see the look on Sigrun's face tonight?”

He speaks slowly. Each word is like another stone dropped into the expansive, vacant darkness. Filled only by the faintest breath of red light against the walls. 

Nathaniel closes his eyes, and breathes in the cold, wet air.

“She would have gone,” he says. “She _wanted_ to go.”

I nod, and rest my head against the wall.

I say, “And Justice would have gone with her.”

“You're losing these people.”

His words come almost right on top of mine. As though he has been holding them in. 

“Much more of this, and—”

“There isn't going to be much more of this,” I say before he can finish. “It's almost over. Don't you feel it, Nathaniel? Feel it in the air. In your blood?”

I push the tips of my fingers against my palms reflexively, touching the edges of the wounds. 

I watch him struggle with himself. Watch him decide whether to push me. The distant firelight caches in his hair. On the elegant, angular lines of his face. Like embers.

“Was it like this in Denerim?” he says at last. “When you killed the archdemon?”

I pull the air right down into the bottom of my lungs.

“It felt a little like this,” I tell him. “The same...”

“Anticipation,” he finishes. 

“No.” I smile and run my tongue across my teeth. “More like vertigo.”

Nathaniel crosses his arms. The sound of his black leather armour rattles against the castle walls. He watches the echo of fire in the sky. 

“Like you're on the very top of the Circle Tower,” I tell him. “With the wind whipping through your hair. Like you have lost your footing, and have just begun to fall.”

I see too late where the words are taking me, and by the time I do, I can no longer avoid it. And so I spit them out, and I hope he does not notice that I have begun to choke on them. 

If he does, then it is noble of him not to show it. 

“I understand,” he says. 

I take a half step into him. Feel my shoulders tighten and my back straighten as I breathe him in.

“You smell of smoke,” I say. “And death.”

The sight of that first arrow, doused in liquid flame as he lifted his aim above the walls of Amaranthine, is burned against my eyelids. 

I say, “It suits you.”

I can feel his eyes on me now, but the look is not invasive. He has been living alongside me for long enough to develop an immunity to the peculiarities in my behaviour. 

“I have another fan, I see,” he says, and I can hear the dry smile in his voice. The edge to his words that isn't quite sarcasm, but isn't quite amusement either. “Should I tell Oghren to be jealous?”

“Perhaps you should.” I hope he does not hear the vertigo. “Nate—”

“No,” he says. He turns away, but a breath more and he is stepping into me again, taking hold of the fur covering my shoulders. His grip is hard enough to bruise me, but I do not flinch away. “Do not tease me, Eladir.”

He does not often call me by name. I have always assumed that either pride and duty prevents him from it. He is angry with me, then. 

I turn my eyes on him at last. He is a tall man, and almost a full head taller than an elf. 

“You think I'm teasing you?”

His hands tighten on my shoulders. 

“It's what you do, isn't it?”

“Only to you.”

Nathaniel laughs. It is a short, hard sound, that catches on the walls. 

“And Anders.”

“Ok,” I admit with a smirk. “And sometimes Anders too.” I am close enough to make him uncomfortable, but he stands his ground against me. “I am not teasing you now, Nate.”

“Aren't you.”

He does not speak the words like a question. He speaks them like a threat. 

I feel the wall against my back almost before I know that he has pushed me. It knocks the breath out of my lungs, and before I can pull it back again, his mouth is over mine. The cool leather of his armour pressed against my chest. 

I make a small, pathetic sort of sound, twist my arms through his, and clamp my hands over his cheeks. 

He does not rush to draw away, and I only let him go reluctantly. 

“What exactly do you hope to achieve with this?”

He still sounds as though he thinks I am playing a game at his expense. There are tiny flakes of my dried blood on his jaw, like ash. 

“Enough,” I snap, the same way I do when we are being closed down by darkspawn, and the line of his shot brings him into the swing of my staff. “Just do that again, and harder.” He hesitates, and the edge in my voice becomes a growl. “Do it, Nate!”

This time, he grabs me by the hair, and I crack my skull against the wall as he yanks my head back, and kisses me again. In the yawning abyss that lies between us and the end of whatever ancient evil is hanging over us, it is like a release. Like standing in the breakers of the open ocean in a storm. 

I have been feeling it for days. The lightning in the air. The feeling that something ancient, something fathomless, is coming. It is the same feeling that twisted my muscles, and strangled my breath on every sleepless night that I marched north to Denerim. Into the jaws of the archdemon. Not knowing whether any of us would come back out alive. The feeling of staring your own death in the face from the moment you wake up until you try, and fail, to sleep. 

Zevran could never ease it for me, although I am certain that he tried. 

This time, I do not squander the opportunity. Every time Nathaniel hesitates, I goad him. I stick my fingers in the parts of him that watched Amaranthine burn. I pull too hard at the leather strappings of his armour as he pushes me to the floor. When none of that works, I tease him. 

“Shut your filthy elven mouth!”

I finally catch hold of it. Of his resentment. Of his rage. He is lying on top of me, and the weight of his body pins me to the flagstones. The cold is soaking through my robes. Into my flesh.

“That's it,” I say. “Do you feel that?”

I do not need to ask the question, I can feel it in the way his hands dig into my sides.

“Shut up,” he tells me again, and snatches hold of my chin. “Another word and I will cut out your tongue.”

If I were stronger I would tease him again then, but all that I can manage is a low, hungry moan. I struggle enough that he has to fight with me, and the harder and crueller that he is, the more I give myself to him. 

I drink it in like fresh, cold water. And, when we are done, I slink into the bed with him to escape the cold autumn wind that has wormed out of the walls of Vigil's Keep, and gotten into my bones.


	2. Chapter 2

“This way, Eladir. Come quickly!”

I am not in the alienage in Denerim. 

One of the advantages of discovering that you can use magic before you are seven years old is that you have a profound understanding of the Fade. You spend almost half of your life there: With one foot in the waking world, and the other in the shifting waters of your dreams. You grow to understand its patterns. 

I have never known what it is like to not realise you are dreaming. The tiny details that are out of place are obvious to me. They turn the substance and reality of it inside-out. And in that moment, I know that I control it. 

I am not in the alienage in Denerim, and I do not want to be here. 

It has been a long time since this place was waiting for me when I slept: It's ramshackle buildings leaning too closely together, it's beggars and cut-throats that stumble though the night, it's high walls cutting it off from the rest of the city, and the guards that are like distant shadows drifting over them. 

I am not afraid yet. I do not know that I cannot escape. The fear only comes when I push against it with my mind. When I try and shred this poor imitation like smoke between my fingers. To cut myself loose into the Fade. When I find that it does not work. 

“Are you coming? What's the matter with you?”

Rethin's voice distorts as I try and press the dream away from me, but I am forced to give out before he does and the fabric of the alienage ripples back into place. It is useless. There is some part of my unconscious mind that is being drawn to this.

I could still leave, of course. Walk away from this memory that has left impressions on my mind like a pebble falling into water. But I know the Fade. I know it well enough to realise that, in five minutes time, I will turn a corner in the dreamscape of the alienage and find myself standing back at the corner of this narrow, filthy alleyway. 

That Rethin will still be calling out to me. If it is going to have me, then I may as well give myself to it. Get it over and done with. 

I have not yet dismissed the possibility that a spirit has brought me here. When they reach out to a mage, they often wear the faces of our friends and our enemies. They know that it is effective in provoking an emotional response. 

Any apprentice in the Circle Tower could tell you that. 

If it is a demon (Rage or Pride, I decide as I follow it into the dark, squat space underneath one of the buildings), then I will hear what it wants soon enough. If Pride that has come for me, then I shall be exhausted when I wake. Too exhausted, maybe, to do what will have to be done. To fight the enemy without, as well as the one that is within. I should have realised before I'd gone to Nathaniel that I would be leaving myself vulnerable. 

I recall the waking world only distantly. It seems as unfamiliar to me as dreams feel upon waking: Nate's hands clamped over my wrists, his whole body coiled with hatred and frustration and desire over mine. The snarls and the insults in his mouth. 

I shudder.

Not Pride, then, but Rage. 

There are a few things gathered together in the space underneath the building, where the bare earth angles up into the floor of the house above. Nothing that anyone would want to steal if they happened to find our hiding place: The stubs of a few blackened candles, makeshift bedrolls of blankets and straw. 

But a dream is not something that you look at, it is something that you _feel_. It not a physical place, but a sensation. Something that is built out of the hundreds of nights that Rethin and I lived out of places like this one. Nights when he taught me spells in a hushed voice and by low candlelight so that the people in the house above would not hear us. When he worked some of the magics that he had learned from Estraven, and guided my pathetic attempts to imitate him. Or nights when storms lashed the alienage and we huddled back there in the dark together, watching the rain fall and talking about how we were going to escape it all—the templars, the Chantry, the humans that locked us in this filthy place. 

The nights that we talked about revenge. 

The darkness underneath that building is alive with the taste of it: With our power, and our pride. 

We were not yet mages. A mage has control over everything he touches and we were still playing at illusions, but Estraven had been the last mage in the alienage and Rethin had spent six months learning from him before the templars dragged him away in the night. Now, Rethin was doing the best that he could to teach me. 

Sometimes, we felt like the rats that lived and died in the storm drains underneath the city. On other nights, we felt like gods. 

Rethin lights a candle, and the orange light makes his hair glow from within like threads of fire. He takes a crumbling, yellow scroll out of his cloak, and my blood begins to freeze inside of me. I know where it is that all of it is going, but it is far too late to run now. 

I never should have mentioned the Circle Tower. 

“This is it, Eladir,” he says as he spreads the scroll out on his bedroll. “Do feel the magic in it?”

I sit down amongst the straw and blankets, and slowly cross my arms. 

“What is it that you want from me, spirit?”

I do not yet know that's what it is, but the way that it reacts will answer that for me. I study Rethin's face as it twists into an expression of frustration, but when he speaks, he only says: 

“Don't be so short-sighed. You're a mage. Act like one. Here.”

He offers me the scroll, but I do not move. I stare him down. 

“Go on,” he tells me. “Take it.”

There is no flicker of self-awareness on his face. No spark of consciousness. 

Not a spirit, then. It is my own mind that has brought me here. The realisation is not a comfort to me, and does not make me safe. Hate has a funny way of lingering between sleep and waking, and tomorrow I must face down the dark and find a way to overcome. 

I should have known that this would happen. 

Rethin is still staring at me, and eventually I snatch the scroll out of his hands. I cannot stop the pang of curiosity that makes me look down at the runes scrawled onto it in thick, black ink. They were just black blotches on a piece of old, yellowed parchment when this happened to me. Now they are all so familiar that I do not have to struggle to read them at all. 

It was a good spell, then, and a fair copy of it, too. 

I had always wondered.

Rethin is speaking again: 

“Some,” he says. “Enough. It is in the old Tevinter language. Estraven taught me a little, once. He had a book that was filled with spells like this. I tried to find it, after the templars took him... But there was nothing left.”

I cannot even remember what question I was meant to ask him. The dream is like a piece of music. It has been played the same way a hundred thousand times, and I am like de-tuned string at the heart of it. A minstrel who is playing three bars behind. Every time I do not fulfil my part in all of this, I am a dissonance in it. 

It is an uncomfortable feeling. Like having your hair pulled. I struggle to remember what it is that I am meant to say next, vainly hoping that maybe that will make this easier. 

“What... What do you think—”

I have taken too long to speak, and Rethin cuts me off. 

“Burned them?” he says. “I don't know. Maybe they fed them to their pet mages. Told them that they could play with them while the Knight-Commander watched and decided whether they had any right to live, or not.”

The candle spits against the song of the wind through the nooks and crannies in the alienage.

“W-What does it do?” I manage.

“Mind control, I think.”

He glances across at me, and smiles ruefully. 

“This could fix all our problems, Eladir,” he says. “We don't have to spend all of our nights hanging around outside a tavern waiting for a man with too much coin and too much ale to stumble out into our path. We can walk right up to Arl Uriel's vassals and just ask them to hand us their purses.”

“Rethin don't... Please...”

I have acted out of turn again, and the Fade retaliates by pulling my hair.

“So what if it is?” he retorts to something that I have not said. “We are already illegal mages, Eladir. If the templars catch us, they'll probably kill us. Why shouldn't we make use of the other things that they say are forbidden, and decide for ourselves what we think? Do you just accept what the Chantry says about what you are? Because if you do then maybe you should be handing yourself over to the Circle rather than coming with me.”

There is a ferocity in him that I do not remember from when I was a child. Perhaps I was blind to it then. I did not look at him as a man, or as another elf. I looked to him as someone may gaze at a wonder.

“You stupid boy!” I snap at him, but my voice is ruined by pain. 

I should have told him that I would not help. That if he was going to go ahead with this, then he would have to do it on his own. Perhaps that would have been enough to stop him. 

“Don't worry,” he says with a smile, and lies down on his bedroll. “I have a plan.”

Perhaps the templars would just have found us out some other way.


	3. Chapter 3

I wake at the sound of someone hammering on the door, and quickly push aside the weariness of the dream. I wrap a sheet about my waist as I get out of bed, and when Nathaniel makes to follow me I hold out my hand to stay him. 

I do not wait for his consent before I open the door. 

It is the early hours of the morning, and the light that cuts between the scudding storm clouds is pale apricot in colour. It gives Anders the appearance of a man suspended in amber. He has fine bones and an elegant face, especially when he is as angry as he is now. 

“I need to speak with you,” he says. 

“Do you?” I say, and measure the situation with a smile. “Very well.”

I move out of the way to allow him inside. He does not seem taken aback by my state of undress, but Nathaniel is watching him calmly and patiently. He is still lying in my bed, naked to the waist, with his hands linked placidly behind his head. When Anders notices, he stumbles.

“Good morning, Anders,” Nathaniel prompts him.

Anders looks as though he has had his legs cut out from underneath him.

I smile at Nate. He has played that perfectly.

“There was something that you wanted?” I ask. There is no warmth in my voice now. I have gauged the look in his eyes and decided that he is here to fight with me. 

“You let that city burn!” To give him credit, Anders recovers himself quickly and lets his anger cover his loss of footing. I prepare myself to have this argument again, but he is not done yet. “Instead, you return to fight the darkspawn here and... You were using blood magic last night, Eladir. I _saw_ you.”

The slow press of lyrium through my blood has almost healed the cuts to my hands and forearms, but I make no attempt to hide the old, white scars. I roll my shoulders into a shrug. 

“I am a Grey Warden, Anders,” I tell him. “Blood magic is a tool. The Order understand this. Ask Woolsey, if you do not believe me.”

“You selfish bastard!” He is shouting at me now, gesturing with his hands. “And what do you think will happen when they find out that the Grey Warden who gave the Circle its freedom is a maleficarum, Eladir? What do you think the Chantry will do? You endanger everything that you have achieved for us!”

I cross my arms calmly, and stare him down. 

“The Chantry may judge me as it wishes,” I tell him. “Hopefully, what little blood magic I know will ensure that they live long enough to do it.”

Anders grits his teeth.

“Do you have any idea how stupid you are?”

“You are talking to the Hero of Ferelden, man! Show some respect.”

Nathaniel's voice cuts through the air like a blade, and staggers Anders into silence. The expression on his face darkens.

“I should have expected you to be involved in this,” Anders spits at him. “I'm sure you are much happier now that your precious family stronghold is safe and all of the people your father betrayed in Amaranthine are burning.

“You seem to have developed a lot of loyalty for the Commander since he started bedding you,” he goes on. “Tell me, Nathaniel, did he order you into his bed, or did you go willingly?”

If any of that finds purchase with Nathaniel, then he does not let it show. He relaxes back a little more against the headboard and shrugs his shoulders. Maker, he is beautiful. 

He says, “I don't see how that is your business, either way.”

This time, I see the breach that he is opening up for me, and I do not hesitate to step into it.   
“I am not running a gang of cut-throats out of the back room of a tavern, Anders,” I tell him. “I am the Commander of the Grey. When you do not like an order: You do it anyway. And when you do not approve of my decisions: You shut the hell up. You don't come complaining to me like a child. I am _not_ your friend.”

Anders holds up his hands in surrender. He looks tired. Almost as tired as me.

“So I see,” he says. 

I remember the look on Alistair's face when I conscripted Loghain into the Grey Wardens. Then, I remember the look on Sigrun's. On Justice's. 

_You are losing these people_ , Nathaniel told me. 

Too late to stop it now. We have begun to fall. 

I close the door behind him when he leaves, and draw a breath for the way down. Nathaniel is still in my bed. He is smiling at me. 

“You enjoyed that,” he tells me. 

I laugh a little.

“So did you.”

Nathaniel unlinks his hands, and holds them up. 

“Guilty as charged, Commander.”

I push my fingers through my hair, tracing the edges of my ears. It is a nervous habit. One that I got out of a long time ago. I do not even need to open my mouth before he pre-empts what is about to come. 

“We have made our decisions,” he says. “For better or worse. The only thing left is to follow them through.”

I rub my face with my palms. I already know that he is right, I am just stopping to feel the wind rush through my hair as the ground races up to meet me.

Nathaniel slides out of bed, and begins to pull on his armour. When he notices me watching him, he stands and places a hand on my shoulder.

“There is an evil much greater than you and I out there,” he says. “And it is waiting in the dark for us.”


	4. Chapter 4

Lyrium poisoning is not a pleasant thing. Neither is it an experience that a life spent in the Circle Tower will ever prepare you for. There, the lyrium is carefully rationed out between the mages and the templars, and no one ever has too much of it in case they start getting ideas about trying to storm the Golden City again. 

As a free mage in the Grey Wardens, you are called upon to do more magic in an afternoon than you might have done in a month in the Circle. It goes on for day after day after day, until a fight pushes you too hard, and you've put so much lyrium into your stomach and your blood that your body finally begins to reject it. 

I read a missive from one of the senior enchanters in Starkhaven once, claiming that when mages experience lyrium sickness, it is because there is so much magic in them that the Fade has begun to suck the soul in, leaving the body to die. It is only now that I understand what they meant. I wonder what sort of life that enchanter must have lived, to have put themselves through all of this.   
It feels like my body is dying, and nothing makes sense any more. The walls seem to bleed into faces. Everything spins. I try and walk around things that are not there. 

Sometimes, it is worse. 

When we took down the archdemon, I did not manage to crawl out of it for almost three days.   
This is not as bad, but it is enough to render me useless. To leave Nathaniel with little choice but to find a dark corner in the tunnels underneath the Dragonbone Wastes where we can weather out the night. The two of us are alone down here, and he must either stay with me while it passes, or leave me to die. 

The Mother's blood covers us both. It turns my hands slippery, and I can't stop staring at them. Perhaps, then, it is all of the blood that draws me back to the alienage again. Only it is not a dream this time. More like a disjointed collection of images and feelings. The inside of Lady Elsbeth's room at the Dragon's Tongue Inn. The walls covered in blood. The sound of her screams. Like something had been severed in her mind that could never be repaired. 

The cold steel of the templar's armour against my flesh and bone when they finally caught up with us. Rethin's lips against mine between the bars separating our cells in Arl Uriel's dungeon, and the low rasp of his voice down there in the dark.

“It was me that took the scroll. I'm going to tell them that, so don't be stupid, Eladir. Keep your mouth shut and let me talk them around. We'll have enchanters' rooms in the Circle Tower before you know it. Three meals a day and a warm bed.”

And then, after a month of silence and blood.

“Whatever happens, stick to the plan, all right? Just keep on going, no matter what.”


	5. Chapter 5

I do not know how long it has been by the time I finally come out the other side. Hours, maybe. A day. Nathaniel has built a tiny fire to ward off the cold, and for a long time the colours are too bright for me. I feel as though my stomach is trying to pull itself out of my mouth. 

As I sit up, he looks up at me from his watchpost by the entrance of the tiny cavern that we are holed up in. Everything is jumbled together. I can see a body lying at his feet, and spend a few seconds telling myself that it is not Justice. My mind fights me every step of the way. 

It probably is not there at all.

Nathaniel is perched on the rocks with his arm held uncomfortably across his chest. Most of the blood does not appear to be his. It is probably broken, then. 

I stretch out my fingers to test the flow of the lyrium in my blood, but it is like trying to breathe in iron filings. 

Beyond impossible. 

I keep staring at my hands.

I say, “How long?”

He has not yet moved from his perch by the entrance, his good hand resting on the elegant curve of his bow. 

“Five or six hours,” he says. His voice is deep, and rich, and seems to reverberate in the bottom of my chest. “Are you all right?”

I nod firmly. 

“I will live,” I tell him. “Let me see to your arm. Then we can think about how to limp out of here without getting ourselves killed.”

“You mean before we start worrying about how to get back to the Keep?” he says, and sighs. “Maker.”

I smile, and try my feet to see if they will hold me. He does not offer to help, and I am grateful for it. 

“Feels like it's on the other side of Thedas, doesn't it?”

He does not answer, but complies quietly when I unfasten the catches on his armour. I can see his suffering in the slow, shuddering way that he raises his arm for me, although he does not flinch or complain. There are rents and punctures in the leather. Some of them are deep, but when I strip him out of his jerkin I can see that most of the wounds underneath have healed. 

I must have done a better job of keeping him on his feet than I thought. 

“Most of the pain is in my back,” he tells me. We have only been fighting together for a few months, but he has learned quickly how to give me the information that I need. “I don't think that anything is broken.”

He twists his arm around a little, and flexes his wrist. I make a note of the stiffness in his fingers, and press my hands into the muscles of his back and shoulders until I find the point that makes him suck the breath in through his teeth.

“Relax,” I tell him. “Let me take the weight of your arm, and try not to resist.”

Nathaniel pushes the air out again, and does as he is told. I work the tips of my fingers across his shoulder-blade, and try to concentrate. He has torn the muscles in the shoulder of his draw arm, and without magic to speed up the healing process, the best that I can do is limit any further damage that he might do. In truth, it is the kind of injury that only time can heal. Even magic is of little use when neglect has let the rot in. 

It has been a long time, and filled with nothing but the spit of the small fire against the cavern walls, before Nathaniel speaks again. I have bound up his shoulder tightly, and have moved on to strapping his wrist. 

“Do you feel guilty?” he asks slowly.

My mind is still addled with lyrium. I think that I can hear the stones singing. It takes a long time for his words to reach me. 

“About what happened?” he prompts. “About what we did. To Justice. To Sigrun.”

I frown, and continue to wrap the length of bandage snugly around his forearm. 

“No,” I tell him.

Nathaniel nods and stares into the fire. 

Eventually, he pinches the bridge of his nose, and admits:

“Neither do I.”


	6. Chapter 6

It takes us two days to ride back to the Vigil in the pouring autumn rain. 

The first night, we shelter for a few cold, miserable hours underneath a chestnut tree as the darkness passes, and it is late into the second by the time that we approach the walls. 

We are beyond exhausted. More like ghosts than men, cut adrift into the storm. 

When we get into the courtyard, we slide out of the rainwater-slickened saddles and are halfway up the stairs towards the keep by the time that Anders catches up with us. There are others there too. On the periphery. Faceless. Like vague shapes beneath the surface of the sea. 

They will want to know what has happened, then.

They will want to know why we are alone.

“Not now, Anders,” Nathaniel tells him and raises his hand. His voice does not admit any kind of protest. 

We make the slow climb up onto the gallery, both of us dripping wet and shivering. Nathaniel pauses there and steadies himself against the bannister. 

“I should...” he tries.

I smile, and take him by the hand. 

“Come with me,” I tell him.

And he does.

We strip out of our clothes and crawl into the bed without even bothering to light the fire. Sleep comes for us swiftly, and we are tired enough that we can do nothing but give in to it.


	7. Chapter 7

If there is one thing I have learned since leaving the Circle Tower, it is that the further up the chain you go, the shorter people's memories can be. Ferelden's so-called nobles are the worst. It was only six months ago that I dragged their entire country back from the bring of an abyss, and it has only been a week since Nathaniel and I pulled down that monstrous creature in the Wastes. And yet, here they all are. In the main hall of the Vigil. All wanting their pound of flesh. 

Nate tells me that it has always been this way, but I still find the entire process infuriating. Maybe that is why I liked Loghain so much. Why I would have had him at my back over a hundred men like Alistair or Eamon. We are the same, he and I. 

I think it has amused him to watch my continued frustration at the court politics of Ferelden.   
But then, he will be in Orlais by now, so I suppose that the joke is on him after all. 

I find myself wondering how many chevaliers joined the Orlesian Grey Wardens during the Blight. How many of them Loghain has beaten to death. 

Nathaniel touches my arm lightly, and I realise that Liza has finally stopped speaking. I have no idea what it was that she was saying, but it is easy enough to guess the gist of it.

I raise my hand to my temple. Maker, I feel tired. 

“Lady Packton,” I tell her. “I have... Nothing left to say to you. You will pay Ser Derren ten percent of the tolls that you take from that bridge, and that will be the end of it.”

I look at Nathaniel as I am speaking. He is standing to my left and a step back, with his hands linked behind his back. The torn muscles in his shoulder have mostly healed now, and he is watching her. Gauging her reaction. Looming like a shadow cast by fire. 

“Arl Howe promised those lands to me,” she protests. “ _You_ promised those lands to me, Warden. I will not be treated like this. That bridge is going to be vital for the rebuilding effort in Amaranthine—”

“And so you shall be getting plenty of money out of my coffers as it is, Liza. More than enough to share that with Ser Derren. Do not try my patience.”

She sucks in a breath full of self-righteousness, but is cut off when Nathaniel steps towards her.

“I think it's time you left,” he smoulders. 

He must know that he is provoking her. Maybe he is doing it on purpose. 

“Oh yes,” she says, rounding on me. “Please do stand there and let _him_ throw me out. That's exactly what Amaranthine needs right now: Another Howe with the run of Vigil's Keep, handing out orders. I am glad to see that you have made a pet of this one, Commander, but I should be careful how closely you choose to clasp the adder to your chest.”

There is a fraction of a second when I am angry at her. Then I find myself looking at Nathaniel in his black, scaled armour and find that I cannot lose my temper. That the image amuses me too much. 

“Nathaniel,” I ask calmly. “How do you reach Lady Packton's lands from here?”

There is a raven's curiosity in him, but plays along all the same.

“They are about an hour to the south,” he says. “On either side of the Hafter River on the main road from the Bannorn.”

I smile.

“And what is it like there? Do you know it?”

Nathaniel nods. 

“Of course,” he says. “My sister and I used to play there all the time when we were younger. The river is quite shallow there, but fast-flowing. Chalk hills, beech woodland. It is quite beautiful.”

“Sounds like the perfect place for the Adder of Amaranthine, don't you think, Lady Packton?” I ask her. “Close enough to the Vigil that I can make sure to keep him on a short leash, since you are so concerned about my safety.”

She stares at me blankly, trying to work out whether I am being serious. I wait until I see her decide that I am serious enough to warrant being left alone. 

“Who's next?” I ask the room.

Loghain Mac Tir would be proud.


	8. Chapter 8

“You know that whole 'Adder of Amaranthine' thing is going to stick, don't you?”

His voice is low. Threatening. There is thunder in it again. 

It is just beginning to get dark, and I have walked out of the main hall to find myself pinned up against the wall. I am halfway through drawing the knife at my belt before I realise he has side-stepped me and forced me back. It saves me from sticking the blade into a weak point in his armour.

I smile, but Nathaniel does not look entertained. 

“Enough, Eladir.”

I incline my head a little, and reach out to touch his hair.

“You don't approve?”

“Approve?” he growls. “Of being treated like your pet in front of those people? Of having my family reduced to this? A poison for you to threaten your enemies?”

He is breathing just a little too quickly, and I struggle not to drown in it. Not to scratch my nails along his shoulders and make him force me into bed. 

“The snake is a symbol of transformation,” I tell him. “Of rebirth. It seemed apt. And... A suitable title for my master-at-arms.”

The corner of his mouth twists into a smile.

“I'm sure that's exactly it,” he says. “And not at all that you liked the idea of holding me over those people like a viper that will come for them in the night.”

I shrug, and laugh softly.

“The Free Marches did teach you an awful lot about poison,” I tease, and then: “It does not have to be one or the other, Nate. And, if you do not like it, then you shall just have to tell them to stop.”

Nathaniel laughs coldly, and pushes himself away from me.

“Oh yes,” he says. “That should go over well. Then they shall only use it behind my back.”

I pull the air back into my lungs, and ease myself off of the wall.

“Besides,” I say. “It suits you.”

Nathaniel shakes his head, and holds out his hand for mine.

“Perhaps,” he says. “That is what I'm afraid of.”


	9. Chapter 9

Just when I begin to think that I have escaped, Rethin comes for me again. 

It is my own fault. The past's way of reminding me what happens when I am allowed to be content. 

The Circle Tower is an expanse of darkness and blue magelight, guttering in the wind that blows through the highest windows. I am crouched down low in the stores at the very top of the Tower, and I am waiting. Listening to the requiem sung by the wind and the rain. 

I can hear him coming up the narrow stairs. Those slow, deliberate footsteps. There is nothing left to do but to play my part in all of this. Maybe then it will be over. It is wishful thinking. I remember having the same thoughts when I lived through it.

The first time that I...

“Eladir, are you there?”

Rethin's voice does not sound right. It is flat. Hollow. Without feeling. 

“Is there something that you wanted?”

I get to my feet. As I draw closer, I can see the brand on his forehead that marks him as one of the Tranquil. 

Outside of the Tower, people are very quick to talk about how _necessary_ the Rite of Tranquillity is. How it protects us all from maleficarum. As far as I know, the Chantry are yet to devise a ritual that protects innocent men and women from people like Rendon Howe. Men with the power and influence to cause more destruction than any abomination. 

Men, perhaps, like me.

In my experience, the people who say that it is _necessary_ are the same ones that will never have to worry about seeing the Rite conducted on their friends. People who will not have to live out their days and nights alongside the empty shell of a person that once ruled over their whole hearts.

Rethin was a brother to me. An idol. 

I have been living with what he has become for three years now, and every day it robs a little more out of his memory. I no longer think of him as the ferocious, wild boy who kept me safe and taught me spells by candlelight. That man is disappearing, and more and more his name does not invoke him. It invokes this placid, lifeless, empty thing instead. The thing that wears his face and voice, but may as well be anyone or anything.

I clench my hands at my sides, and stand up in the faint, blue light. 

Something must be done. 

I must be rid of all of this.

Again.

I do not speak to him. There are no last pleas to invoke the spirit of the friend that I have lost. I have wasted three years of my life begging and crying futile tears while he sat placidly beside me. It is over. 

_Eladir..._

I cannot tell whether something in the dream calls out to me, or whether it is just an echo of my own mind. 

“Do you require something?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “I do.”

_Eladir..._

I go to him. I have spent the last six months knowing that I must do this. I never expected that it would be so easy. 

He backs away from me and opens his mouth to speak, but before he has the chance, I plant both of my palms against his shoulders, and I push him hard. For a second, his entire body is rigid with adrenaline and his hands are snatching vainly at the sleeves of my robes, but I pull away too quickly, and stand back to watch him fall. 

To watch his body reduced to blood and broken bones. 

I drift down to stand over him, as though I am suspended in thick smoke. He is still breathing, but I am learning the hands of a healer. I can tell that it will not be long. No one will find us here before it is done, and I will slip back into my cell hours before any of them know that he is dead. I will let them all think that he came up here to make his nightly checks, and fell. 

I crouch over Rethin's body as the last of the life gurgles and rasps in his lungs, and I wait.

_Commander!_

I realise that Nathaniel has been calling to me for quite some time. It is only my rank which wakes me. That forces me to open my eyes, ready to fight or die. 

It is the middle of the night, and raining. But the moon is full behind the clouds, and the window is a lattice of silver-blue. I have been sobbing in my sleep, and loud enough to wake him. 

The anger and humiliation is unbearable. 

I make a sound like a snarl, and try to push him away. I can see the contours of his body in the darkness. The rich blackness of his hair. 

“No,” he tells me.

I should not be surprised. After all, I have spent the last month teaching him not to listen to my protests. And so he struggles with me, and I fight him all the way down to my teeth and fingernails. I feel the lyrium surge in my blood, and hesitate on the precipice of pushing him away with my mind, but the truth is that I do not have it in me. 

“Stop it,” I snap at him, but it is no use. 

I have already let him win.

His arms are as immoveable as stone, and he holds me for a long time before the fight begins to drain into the sound of falling rain. 

“No,” he says again, and he refuses to let go. 

And so I let him. I let him, if only because he does not ask for anything more than compliance. And I do not let him see that he has robbed me of the best part of my dignity.


	10. Chapter 10

I sleep through most of the morning, and when I wake, I am alone. I dress myself, but find that I do not have the will for anything more, and so I sit on the bed with my knees drawn up to my chest, and I watch the rain trace down the glass. 

I have no idea where Nathaniel is. No doubt dealing with all of the pointless responsibilities that I had to fulfil today. Telling the staff that the commander is not to be disturbed. Perhaps that should be some kind of comfort, but in truth, it frightens me. 

When he does come to me, it is with a thief's deftness and grace, barely disturbing the grey crackle of the rain. Stirring the surface of my thoughts like wind upon water. He says nothing, but comes to sit on the bed beside me and follows my gaze to the window. 

This was once his father's room, and I find myself thinking that the view must be as natural to him as breathing. The rain has turned the black leather of his cloak into polished jet. Droplets of it are caught like tiny sparks of light in his hair and on his face. There is a scroll of old parchment in his hand, and when my mind is drawn back to that crawlspace underneath the alienage, I wrap my arms around myself and push the thought away. 

I am still waiting for him to ask me to unburden my soul. It is an agony. Like standing on a ledge, and waiting to be pushed. When it happens, I tell myself, I will not stand for it. I am not going to do this, and if he is going to try and make me...

“I have something for you,” Nathaniel tells me.

I study his eyes, and when I have comforted myself that he is not playing a game with me, I take the scroll out of his hands. The paper is old, and smells of decay. The symbols painted onto it are familiar, but indecipherable. I know enough to see that it is arcane, but...

I cannot stay my curiosity, and frown at the symbols for the passing of an age. There is nothing but grey light, and the tapping of the rain. I follow a few of the lines smoothly with my fingertip, and do not look up at him when I speak.

“This is an Avvar spell scroll,” I tell him.

Nathaniel draws his bow to lay it down on the bed beside us, and leans back against the headboard next to me. 

“We found it down in the basement underneath the keep,” he says. “Behind a cave in. It didn't look as though anyone had been down there in a while.”

I am briefly jerked away from the scroll to look at him.

“Problems?”

Nathaniel shrugs. 

“A few,” he says quietly. “Not any more.”

A pang of envy worms its way up my spine. I should have been down there with him. Maker, two weeks without a fight and I am ready to rip the legs off of anything that gets in my way. Two years of fighting a war has a habit of doing that to you, I suppose. 

I do not look back at the paper in my hands. I can already feel it tugging at me. The unknown. The unquenchable desire to slake my thirst on it. 

“Do you know what this is, Nathaniel?”

He is watching the rain. His expression is unreadable. 

“Tell me.”

“Barbarian magic,” I tell him. “Spells like these have not been performed beyond the Frostback Mountains since the Divine Age. They have been forgotten by the rest of Ferelden for centuries. This could be something beyond the understanding of almost every mage alive in Thedas.”

The avid tone in my voice catches his attention and he looks at the paper in my hands. He leans into me, and I breathe in the rain and dust that clings to him. 

“What does it do?”

I settle my body against his, and shake my head. 

“I have no idea,” I admit. “But it should not be too hard to decode it using the other Avvar writings that we've found down there. Give me a few days with enough ink and paper and...” I shrug my shoulders. “It doesn't matter what it does: Whether it is a spell for boiling the brains of your enemies inside their skulls, or keeping moths out of your wardrobe. What matters is that no one else in all of Ferelden knows it, or how it is cast. When I master it, I will be the first person to work this magic here since before the Imperium.”

Nathaniel turns his eyes on me. Pale blue and almost grey in the light from the low autumn sky.  
“Is it dangerous?” he asks. “To re-learn how to do something like that?”

I shiver, and try not to think about the spell that Rethin stole from Tevinter. About the sound of Lady Elsbeth's screams as he ripped her mind apart with ignorant, clawed hands. But even that memory cannot quite quench the small surge of excitement that is catching in my chest.

“Sometimes,” I admit, and roll my shoulders. “Magic is always dangerous, Nate. It is a mage's place to do it anyway. To push the boundaries of what we know. Of what can be achieved.”

A smile quirks at his lips, and he places his hand over mine.

“I think that the Chantry may disagree with you.”

I snarl, and every muscle across my shoulders tenses. 

“That is because the Chantry is _wrong_!”

The intensity in me catches him off guard, and it takes him a few moments to recover. 

“There might be more like that down there,” he says, deftly bringing us back into calm waters. “There are three or four rooms down there. All of them are Avvar. I will show you later if you like. I've told them not to touch anything for now.”

I do not know when he became the perfect counterweight to me. When he began to ensure that everything that I needed to be done, was done for me. I suppose that it must have grown out of the symbiotic relationship that exists between a mage and the soldiers he protects. I had expected to find that balance in Alistair. A templar, of all people, should understand these things. And yet he never did. 

I let the silence fill the space between us, and twist my hand around in his until our fingers our interlaced. 

“I would like to say,” I tell him. “That I knew you would make this good a general when I found you in that dungeon and conscripted you.”

Nathaniel shakes his head. 

“I imagine that my face must have been quite the picture.”

I laugh all the way at the back of my throat. 

“You were _horrified_ ,” I tell him. 

“And that gave you no small amount of pleasure, I assume,” he says, and, when I do not respond: “I am glad that you did it. I have more right to be grateful for that than anything else that has ever been done for me. I don't think I ever thanked you.”

I wrinkle my nose up, and rest my cheek against the slick, wet leather of his cloak.

“Save your thanks for when there is another Blight,” I say to him. “When we are five years on from now, and the Wardens are still finding monsters that we must risk our lives to kill. Or when they start trying to tell us that we are getting too old, and need to be sent down to the Deep Roads to die.”

I try to disguise the nausea that creeps into my voice, but it is pointless.

He says, “Are you afraid? Of death?”

I laugh bitterly, and finally set the scroll aside.

“I am not afraid to die,” I tell him. “I am afraid of not being given any choice in the matter.”

Nathaniel puts his arm around my shoulders, and I do not protest. 

“Do you regret it?”

The cold, wet leather of his cloak draws a shiver out of me.

“I was not given much more of a choice in the matter than you were.”

“And if you were?”

Out in the courtyard, there is the sound of hooves on flagstones. The shouts of the servants and the stablehands. Another messenger from Denerim, from Redcliffe, or Orlais.

“I don't know,” I admit eventually. “I suppose that it is a better life than being a mage in the Circle. It is still a prison, but at least it is one that I bring with me, instead of one where the doors are barred to lock me in.”

His breath is on my skin. I could stay here with him forever, suspended in this grey light. 

“I heard a rumour,” he says. “That the Warden-Commander of Orlais is planning to come here.”

I nod, and rub my forehead absently. 

“Yes,” I say. “I heard that, too.”

“How?” he asks. “I mean...”

He sounds surprised, and I wonder who has been feeding him his information. 

“Loghain,” I explain with a smile. “I received a letter from him a few days ago.”

“Ah,” Nathaniel says, unsure of how else he can respond. 

I'm still not certain that he has squared that circle yet. Perhaps it is best, then, that Loghain is a long, long way away from here.

“If she is coming here to disapprove of my methods,” I tell him. “Then I shall fight her, Nate. I will give her everything I've got.”

“I understand,” he says, and I can hear in his voice that he is preparing himself for it. “Will you leave?”

“Maybe,” I say, and worm my arm around his waist.

Nathaniel hesitates. 

“I think...” he says, and then takes a breath and tries again. “I think I have to stay.”

I trace the lines of his armour with the tip of my finger. Perhaps he expects me to fight him, and is surprised when I do not.

“For Amaranthine?” I ask him. “Or for the Grey Wardens?”

“Would you think I was avoiding the question if I said it was a little of both?”

I do not answer him immediately. The rain is getting heavier now. I can barely even see the other side of the courtyard any more. I can hear it on the flagstones of the courtyard: A low, persistent roar. 

“If I can stay, perhaps I will.”

I do not see him smile, but I can hear it in his voice. 

“Tell me something, Eladir,” he says. “What is it that you want?”

I shrug, and close my eyes.

“Survival,” I say at last. 

“There must be more to it than that,” he says, and then: “Have you never thought about it?”

“Should I have done?” I impale the frost blue of his eyes on my own. “I was an elf living on the streets of Denerim. After that, I was an apprentice in the Circle Tower, and then a Grey Warden in the middle of a Blight. It seems to me that survival is probably the best that I could hope for.”

I am making him uncomfortable now. My life is utterly beyond the field of his comprehension, and he dare not touch it for fear of making a fool of himself. I listened to him flounder helplessly with Sigrun for months, and realise that he does not know how to stop himself from doing it all over again.

Nathaniel pulls away, rubbing his weakened shoulder and reaching out for the spell scroll. 

“Perhaps you could turn the Vigil into a sanctum of learning,” he says, turning the old, dry paper over in his hands. “A place where the Grey Warden recruits can expand their knowledge of magic.”

I laugh, and wrap my arms back around myself to ward off the cold that his absence has left behind. 

“Build a library that is filled from floor to ceiling with arcane texts?” I suggest. “A place of silence and spellfire beyond the jurisdiction of the Chantry?”

Nathaniel smiles and gets to his feet. The silver light pours through the window and draws him to the water that trickle slowly down the glass. 

“Why not?” he says. “There must be other places like that. Grey Warden strongholds dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. If there isn't, then I don't know what they've been doing for the last four hundred years.”

I measure him carefully. He is trying to give me something that is worth fighting for. His efforts are clumsy, but I am frustrated to realise that I cannot find it anything but utterly endearing.

“Perhaps,” I tell him. “Although we should set our sights a little more modestly to begin with. Maybe I shall take an apprentice, if I can find a mage that is suitable.” I laugh. “I could go to the Circle Tower: Find a promising apprentice, and invoke the Right of Conscription. I am certain Irving would love me for it.”

“Is that what you want?” he says, sceptically. “To take in a pupil?”

I cannot say I blame him. He has seen the way that I treat the Warden recruits.

“It is different with magic,” I explain, and shrug my shoulders. “The knowledge of magic is like venereal disease, Nate. Once you have it, you can't help but share.”

Nathaniel laughs, and shoots a glance over his shoulder.

“What a charming image,” he tells me. “Thank you.”

I smirk, and lean back into the pillows. 

“Well, if you will insist on sleeping with a knife ears from the alienage...”

“And the Commander of the Grey,” he reminds me. 

It does not matter how many insults he spits through his teeth at me when we are in bed together. He is a lost cause. It has taken several years of my life to be able to see it: That moment when someone has begun to fall in love with you. Even now, I only ever notice when it is already too late. 

“There is something that I wanted to talk to you about,” he says, as though he has read my thoughts. It is a habit that seems to be becoming frustratingly common. 

I cant my head, and I watch him, but he does not spit it out in a flurry, or give in to the discomfort of my gaze. He just stands there with his back to me, and he waits for me to tell him to go on. 

I say, “You want to talk about Zevran.”

“Yes.”

Here it is, then. I suppose that it is only fair. 

I get to my feet, and let him speak. 

“I don't have any interest in prying into your personal affairs, Eladir—”

“Oh, but you do,” I cut him off. “That is why you are asking.”

Nathaniel's jaw tightens in frustration, and I feel my own temper begin to rise in response.

“I am asking because I know he writes to you,” he says. “Because I have a right to know—”  
I laugh at him. It is a cold, hard, angry sound that I only give up because I have to.

“You have a _right_ , do you?” I demand. “A right to more than my body? To more than I would give to you willingly?”

I had been so certain that I was going to handle this better. That I could find some way to wring some sympathy or understanding out of myself. I suppose that, in the end, you cannot invoke something that does not exist. If you could, then the Chantry certainly would have succeeded in conjuring the face of the Maker out of the air by now.

Tension creeps into Nathaniel's shoulders, and I walk barefoot towards him. 

“I needed an answer,” he says coldly. “Now I suppose that I have one.”

He turns around to leave, only to find me standing behind him. I manage to catch him off-guard, and use the advantage to throw him back hard, before he can push me aside.

I hit him. Hard. And while he is still recovering himself, I kiss him. I am half-braced against any retaliation that he might offer. Half-expecting to find myself beaten to the floor. But Nathaniel only grabs me by the elbows and snatches my body against his. He kisses me hard enough to bruise my lips against his teeth, and I do not try to stop him. 

By the time he draws away, we are both breathless and shaking with rage. 

“You proud, stupid boy,” I threaten, pressing my forehead into his until it aches. “He is not the one that is in my bed. You are.”

He raises his hand to cover the ugly bruise that I have put above his jaw. His eyes are still narrow and ugly. 

“And I should be content with that, should I?”

A growl starts somewhere in my blood, and wells up until it is spilling out of my mouth. 

“If you are looking for some victory over me, Nate,” I tell him. “Then at least take it when it is offered. 

“And... If you are not looking for a victory, then either tell me what it is you want, or get the hell out of my room.”

My whole body is shaking. I am happy for him to believe that it is fury, but it is not. It is fear.

 _You know that this does not end well._ A loose thread at the back of my brain, fluttering in the autumn wind.

Nathaniel raises his hands slowly in surrender. He does not yet understand the reasons why this is an agony to me, but he has begun to accept that it exists. 

“I'm...” he begins. “Forgive me.”

He exhales slowly and shakily, but does not draw away. All of the lightning in the air begins to drain away, but I catch hold of it before it disappears.

“Forgive you?” I say, and bury my fingers in his hair. “You shall have to try much harder than that.”

He laughs, seizes me by the back of the neck, and kisses me savagely. Any protest I may make would be as futile as raging against the sky. I let out a tiny, useless whimper, and melt into him.

“Oh,” he asks me darkly. “Am I?”


End file.
